ABDACOM

American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDACOM) was a short-lived supreme command for all Allied forces in Southeast Asia that was created in early 1942 during World War II. The main objective of the command, led by the British general Archibald Wavell, was to maintain control of the "Malay Barrier", a command area that consisted of Burma, Thailand, French Indochina, Formosa, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, the Andaman Islands, Sarawak, and northern Australia, but the command existed for only a few weeks, as the Japanese quickly occupied much of the Pacific and destroyed the ABDACOM fleet at the Battle of the Java Sea. From 1942 on, it would be mostly US and Australian forces battling for control of the Pacific islands, as both the British Force Z and the Royal Netherlands Navy had been destroyed.